Wondrous Words Wednesday

Wondrous Words Wednesday is a weekly meme where you can share new words that you’ve encountered or spotlight words you love. Feel free to get creative! If you want to play along, grab the button, write a post and come back and add your link to Mr. Linky!

My words this week come from The Art Forger by B. A. Shapiro.

1. stylobate – “The roof is glass and the floor is a sensuous garden filled with freestanding columns, whimsical twelfth-century lion stylobates and all manner of statuary.”

A stylobate is a continuous flat coping or pavement supporting a row of architectural columns.

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2. desaponify – “I find a spot where paint has leaked over and hold the alcohol swab just over the surface: if the paint is new, the alcohol fumes will cause it to soften, to desaponify.”

Even though the meaning of this is pretty evident from the sentence, I decided to look it up. I couldn’t find a definition in my dictionary or online, so I assume desaponify means to soften.

Like this:

Related

I love the sound of this book and what a couple of great words you came across.

I guess that as ‘saponify’ is a word and something can undergo ‘saponification’, then logically, that same thing can undergo ‘desaponification’ or ‘desaponify’! Or perhaps the author is just using a little ‘poetic licence’.

I love the sound of ‘stylobate’, although I am not sure when I would ever find cause to use it!

I have added this book to my reading list, so thanks for a great post and for hosting.

One of the Disney studio buildings in Burbank has a ‘stylobate’ comprised of the 7 Dwarfs – I’ve enjoyed glimpses of this whimsical building as I’ve driven by but had no idea what the call the architectural feature. So cool – thanks for the education! here’s a link that has a picture of the Disney building with stylobate if you’re interested. http://architecture.about.com/cs/greatarchitects/a/disney.htm